by Dick Francis
His mouth slowly opened and shut again.
I ploughed on. ‘I had two friends with me, besides Herrick. We fought off the terrorists, which is why one of them has a damaged wrist and the other a damaged face, as well as other minor injuries, and they ran away.’
‘Malcolm Herrick… is dead?’
‘We called a doctor,’ I said. ‘The doctor believes it was a heart attack. Unless someone does an extremely thorough autopsy, that’s how it will stand.’
The very faintest of smiles crossed his pale face. He rubbed a hand slowly round his jawline. and watched me with assessing eyes.
‘How have you learned all this?’ he said.
‘I’ve listened.’
‘To Russian people? Or all to foreigners?’
‘Everyone who has spoken to me has been concerned that Russia should not be shamed by terrorism at the Games.’
‘You speak like a diplomat,’ he said.
The chin-rubbing went on for a bit. Then he said. ‘And Alyosha. Did you in the end find this Alyosha?’
‘Mm,’ I said. Hans Kramer and Malcolm Herrick both said “Alvosha” in horror before they died. They both knew what they were dying of… and I think they had given it that name. A sort of code name, so that they could talk of it conveniently. I couldn’t find Alvosha, because Alvosha is not a person. It’s the liquid. Alvosha is the way of death.’
18
Yuri Chulitsky drove me back to the Intourist and actually dropped me outside the door. He shook my left hand emotionally, and gave me several pats on the shoulder. And then, with a great air of having a burden well shed, he drove away.
He had been visibly pleased when the Major-General had shaken his hand on parting, and on the way back to the hotel he had stopped the car abruptly by the kerb and put the handbrake on with a jerk.
‘He said is good I ask him to meet you,’ he said. ‘Was correct decision.’
‘Great.’ I said, and meant it.
‘Now, I keep bargain.’
I looked at him in surprise.
‘You help my country. I tell you about Alyosha.’
I was puzzled. ‘Tell me what?’
‘I tell peoples, many peoples, is not good Lord Farringford come to Moscow. I say, in Moscow, Alyosha is waiting. Alyosha is not good peoples.’
‘You told people… people in England?’
‘Da. Peoples tell me, Hans Kramer die, it is Alyosha, Hans Kramer is bad man, is friend of Lord Farringford. Is bad Lord Farringford come to Moscow. So I say to peoples… Alyosha is bad peoples. Alyosha is trouble if Lord Farringford come.’
I shook my head slowly in amazement.
‘But why, Yuri? Why didn’t you want Lord Farringford to come to Moscow?’
He took a long time to answer. The longest pause of all. The lip went up and down six times. He lit a cigarette and took several deep drags. And at last he gave birth to his treason.
‘Is not good… comrades use Lord Farringford… not good we follow him… use him in bad things… I feel shame for comrades who do this. I feel shame… for my country.’
Stephen and Ian were both sitting in the foyer, waiting and looking glum.
‘My God,’ Stephen said, seeing me standing before them. ‘They’ve let him go!’ His face lit into instant good spirits. ‘Where are the handcuffs?’
‘Being debated, I should think.’
There was still nowhere private to talk, since we couldn’t trust my new room, so we simply transferred to the end of the line of seats along the foyer wall, and fell silent if anyone came close.
‘What’s happening?’ Ian said.
‘With luck, nothing much. I don’t think they’ll want to advertise terrorist activity in Moscow, not if they can help it. From your knowledge of this place, would you think the comrades would hush up a murder? Would they be allowed to? I had to tell the big noise that Malcolm was bumped off.’
Ian said, ‘Easier here than anywhere else, my old son. If it suits them to say our pal died of a heart attack, they’ll say it.’
‘Let’s hope it suits,’ I said fervently.
‘Look,’ Ian said, ‘Stephen has told me all you wrote last night. You must think me a poor dumb cluck not to have put all this together myself. But when I looked into it, I got nowhere.’
‘But then I had the password,’ I said, slightly smiling.
‘Alyosha?’ he said, puzzled.
‘No… Horse.’
‘The brotherhood of the saddle,’ Stephen said sardonically. ‘It opens the most private doors all round the world.’
‘And don’t you scoff,’ I said. ‘Because you’re right.’
‘There’s just one thing we want to know,’ Ian said, his calm unchanging face showing no sign of the previous day’s ravages. ‘And that is, why were you so utterly certain that Malcolm was at the heart of things? I mean… it was all so circumstantial… but you were quite sure.’
‘Um…’ I said. ‘It was nothing conclusive in itself. It was really just one more circumstance… and there were already so many. It was the page from his notebook, which Yuri Chulitsky sent to Kropotkin. You remember what it looked like? All doodles. So when do you doodle? When you’re listening, or waiting. When you’re waiting for an answer on the telephone. If you remember, near the bottom of the page there were some letters and numbers, DEP PET 1855 and K’s C 1950. Well… they meant nothing much to me at first sight, but yesterdav afternoon, while we were rolling around Moscow, I thought… suppose Malcolm doodled because he was waiting for those numbers… and then we passed a metro station and I thought of trains… And there it damn well was, staring me in the face. DEP PET 1855 meant Depart Peterborough 18.55 hours, and K’s C 1950 meant arrive King’s Cross at 19.50. He had been ringing up the time-table enquiries to find out.’
‘But what’s so blinding about that?’ Stephen said.
‘Peterborough is the main line station for Burghley.’
‘So,’ Ian said slowly, seeing the point, ‘when Boris overheard what he did on the train from Burghley to London, he was listening to Malcolm… who was selling his goods to his friends.’
‘It seemed possible,’ I said. ‘In fact, it seemed extremely likely. And on that same sheet of paper, probably while still waiting for the time-table people to answer, because they take ages sometimes, Malcolm pencilled in Johnny Farringford as a star possibility for Alyosha. I don’t know’how well he knew Johnny, but he didn’t like him. He referred to him as a shit.’
‘But why on earth should he give such an incriminating piece of paper to anyone else?’ Stephen said. ‘He was really stupid.’
I shook my head. ‘It was only by the merest chance that it reached me and meant anything. To him, it was only a doodle. He scrawled over it. It was just a piece of rubbish to be thrown away… or given to someone who wanted some scrap paper for making notes.’
‘How’s your cough?’ Stephen said.
‘Bloody awful. Let’s have some lunch.’
Because there were three of us, we sat at a different table, the next one along from the Wilkinsons and Frank.
Ian eyed Frank benignly and asked me quietly if the status in that area was still quo.
‘Does he know I know?’ I said. ‘No, he doesn’t. Does he know you know? Who can tell?’
‘Does he know I know you know they know she knows you know?’ Stephen said.
Mrs Wilkinson leaned across the gap. ‘Are you going home on Tuesday, like us?’ she said. ‘Dad and I wont be sorry to be back, will we, Dad?’
Dad looked as if he couldn’t wait.
‘I hope so.’ I said.
Natasha brought the soaring eyebrows and a fixed smile and said I hadn’t kept my promise to tell her where I was going.
Nothing, it seemed, had changed; except that it was Stephen who ate my meat.
After lunch the three of us went up to my room for Ian and Stephen to collect the coats and hats they had left there just before, and while we were debating when next to telephone an
d next to meet, there was a sharp knock on the door.
‘Christ, not again.’ Ian said, instinctively putting a hand to his bruised head.
I went to the door and said, ‘Who is it?’
No reply.
Stephen came and said, ‘Who is it?’ in Russian.
There was this time an answer, but to Stephen it seemed unwelcome.
‘He said the Major-General sent him.’
I let down the drawbridge. Outside in the corridor stood two large men with stolid faces, flat uniformed caps, and long greatcoats. From the look on Stephen’s face, I guessed that the posse had come for the outlaw.
One of them handed me a stuck-down envelope addressed to Randall Drew. Inside there was an extremely brief hand-written note, saying simply, ‘Accompany my officers,’ and below that, ‘Major-General.’
Stephen, looking round-eyed and a little pale, said, ‘I’ll wait here. We’ll both wait here.’
‘No… You’d better go. I’ll telephone.’
‘If you don’t,’ he said, ‘first thing in the morning, I take the goods to Oliver Waterman. Is that right?’
‘Uhuh.’
I pulled hat and coat from the wardrobe and put them on. The two large unsmiling men unsmilingly waited. We all walked along in a cluster of five, and went down in the lift without saying very much.
During our progress through the foyer there was a certain amount of drawing aside of skirts, and several frightened glances. The bulk and intent of my two escorts was unmistakable. No one wanted to be involved in my disaster.
They had come in a large black official car, with a uniformed driver. They gestured to me to sit in the back. I had a parting view of Ian and Stephen’s strained-looking faces as they stood side by side on the pavement, and then the car set off and made unerringly for Derzhinsky Square.
The long façade of the Lubianka loomed along one side of it, looking like a friendly insurance-company building if one didn’t know better. The car however swept past its huge sides and pulled up in front of the big building next door, which was pale blue with white painted scrolls, and would on any other day have looked rather pretty.
My escorts opened the car door for me to get out, and walked beside me into the building. Inside, Lubianka or not, it was clearly no jolly children’s home. We marched at a sturdy pace down wide institutional corridors, and came to a halt outside an unmarked door. One of my escorts knocked, opened the door, and stood aside for me to go in. With a dry mouth and galloping pulse, I went.
It was a comfortable, old-fashioned office, with a lot of dark polished wood and glass-fronted cupboards. A desk. A table. Three or four chairs. And by the window, holding back a dark curtain to look out at the snowy street, the Major-General.
He turned, and walked towards me, and held out his hand. I was so relieved that I automatically gave him my right one in return, and tried not to wince when he grasped it. I wondered if he knew he’d just given me one of the most shaking half hours of my life.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘I have something to show you.’
He led me through a second door in the back wall of the office, into a narrower secondary corridor. After a few yards we came to a door which opened on to a staircase, leading down. We descended to the next floor, and went along another, grittier corridor.
We stopped at a totally smooth metal door. The Major-General pressed a button in the wall beside it, and the door swung open. He went into the room in front of me, and beckoned to me to follow.
I stepped into a square, bare room, brightly lit.
There were two armed policemen standing guard in there, and two other men, sitting on stools, with their arms fastened behind their backs.
If I was surprised to see them, it was nothing to their reaction on seeing me. One of them spat, and the other said something which seemed to shake even the K.G.B.
‘These are the men?’ the Major-General said.
‘Yes.’
I looked into the faces remembered from the Aragvi restaurant. Into the eyes remembered from Gorky Street and under the bridge. Into the souls that had killed Hans Kramer and Malcolm Herrick.
One seemed slightly older, and had a drooping moustache. His lips were a little retracted, showing a gleam of teeth clenched in a travestry of a grin; and even in this place he exuded a bitter hostility.
The other had taut skin over sharp bones, and the large eye-sockets of so many fanatics. Across the eyebrow and down the side of his face there was a scarlet cut, and there was a split swelling on his lower lip.
‘Which of them killed Herrick?’ said the Major-General.
‘The one with the moustache.’
‘He says his wrist is broken,’ the Major-General remarked conversationally. ‘They were waiting at the airport. We had no trouble finding them. They speak very little English, by the way.’
‘Who are they?’ I said.
‘They are journalists.’ He sounded surprised at this discovery. ‘Tarek Zanetti,’ pointing to the man with the moustache, ‘and Mehmet Sarai, with the cut.’
Their names meant nothing to me, even if they were the ones they were born with, which might be doubtful.
‘They have been living in the same compound as Herrick,” the Major-General said. ‘He could have seen them easily every day.
‘Do they belong to something like the Red Brigades?’ I asked.
‘Something new. we think, he said. ‘A breakaway group. But we have yet to make more than the most preliminary interrogation. Immediately they arrived here, I sent for you. However, I will show you something. When we searched the bags they were attempting to leave with, we found this.’ He took a letter out of his pocket, and gave it to me. I unfolded it, but it was typewritten in a language I didn’t know even by sight.
I shook my head and began to hand it back.
‘Read lower down.’
I did as he said, and came across the familiar words, etorphine… acepromazine… chlorocresol… dimethyl sulphoxide.
‘It’s a copy of a report from a chemical company,’ he said, ‘sending an analysis asked for by your friend with the moustache. It seems to have been delivered to him yesterday.’
‘So they wanted to find out what they’d bought.’
‘It would seem so.’ He took back the letter and restored it to his pocket. ‘That is all,’ he said. ‘Your positive identification of these men was required, but nothing more. You are at liberty to go back to England when you wish.’ He hesitated slightly, then continued, ‘It is believed that you will be discreet.’
‘I will,’ I said, and hesitated in my turn. ‘But… these two will have colleagues… and that liquid does exist.’
‘It may be necessary,’ he said heavily, ‘to search every spectator at the entrances.’
‘There’s a quicker way.’
‘What is that? ’
‘It will be summer… Watch for anyone wearing gloves. If they have rubber gloves underneath, arrest them.’
He gazed at me from behind his glasses and rubbed his chin, and slowly said, ‘I see why they sent you.’
‘And gallons of naloxone at every turn…’
‘We will work out many precautions.’
I looked across for the last time at the naked hate-filled faces of international terrorism, and thought about alienation and the destructive steps which led there.
The intensifying to anger of the natural scorn of youth for the mess their elders had made of the world. The desire to punish violently the objects of scorn. The death of love for parents. The permanent sneer for all forms of authority. The frustration of not being able to scourge the despised majority. And after that, the deeper, malignant distortions… The self-delusion that one’s feelings of inadequacy were the fault of society, and that it was necessary to destroy society in order to fee! adequate. The infliction of pain and fear, to feed the hungry ego. The total surrender of reason to raw emotion, in the illusion of being moved by a sort of divine rage. The choice of an unattainable e
nd, so that the violent means could go on and on. The addictive orgasm of the act of laying waste.
‘What are you thinking?’ the Major-General said.
‘That they are self-indulgent.’ I turned away from them with a sense of release. ‘It is easier to smash than to build.’
‘They are pigs,’ he said, with disdain.
‘What will you do with them?’
But that was one question he had no intention of answering directly. He simply said, with polished blandness, ‘Their newspapers must find other writers.’
The Watch, I thought, would be facing the same problem: and an old irrelevant piece of information floated to the surface.
‘Ulrika Meinhof was a journalist,’ I said.
19
The flight home was met at Heathrow at four in the afternoon by one of Hughes-Beckett’s minions, who whisked me off to what he called a debriefing and I called a bloody nuisance.
I coughed my way into the mandarin’s office and protested. I got an insincere apology and a small glass of sherry, when the only thing likely to bring me back to animation was a quadruple scotch.
‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’ I said, feeling feverish.
‘The Prince wants you to meet him at Fontwell Park races in the morning.’
‘I thought of staying in bed.’
‘What’s wrong with your arm?’ he said, disregarding this frivolous statement and eyeing Stephen and Gudrun’s farewell attempt at a restful sling for the journey.
‘Fingers got hammered. But not sickled.’ I must be lightheaded, I thought. Lightheaded from the upsurge of relief at being back where liberty still poked up a few persistent tendrils. Lightheaded at the sight of people smiling in the street. At Christmas trees, and bright lights and cornucopias of shops. One could spurn the affluent society and seek the simple life if one wanted to: the luxury lay in being able to choose.
Hughes-Beckett eased himself in his comfortable office chair and studied the back of his hand.
‘And how… ah… did it go?’ he said.